The Will of God: Re: the Presbyterian Church (Usa)Book of Common Worship

By Reverend Vernon G. Elgin. Ph.D.

THE WILL OF GOD: Re:The Presbyterian Church (USA) Book of Common Worship explores in general the theological topic of "the will of God," as revealed in Scripture, and particularly as treated in the liturgical and worship material in the BOOK OF COMMON WORHSIP. The more than 200 references to the subject in the BCW appear in the different rubrics for worship: adoration, confession, supplication, petition, and explication or explanation. The goal of the book is better to understand how God's will has been revealed, identified, and defined, as a step toward the more perfect worship God expects of the Church.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jan 20, 2012
• ISBN: 9781463449063

Reverend Vernon G. Elgin. Ph.D.

The Reverend Doctor Vernon G. Elgin has retired from a profession of more than fifty-seven years as a parish clergy, sometime Univesity Professor, and global missionary with the Presbyterian Church (USA). He has served the Church primarily in the USA, and more recently in Indonesia, Colombia, New Zealand, Puerto Rico, and Malawi, Africa. Vernon and his wife, Marjorie, are both graduates with Masters' Degrees from the Pittsburgh (Xenia) Presbyterian Theological Seminary. He obtained his Ph.D. Degree from the New College of the University of Edinburgh, Scotland; and his baccalaureate from the Indiana University of Pennsylvania. He has previously published OBITUARY THEOLOGY, SEVEN ABOMINATIONS WITH A WRENCH, and HOLY HITCHHIKING FOREIGN HIGHWAYS. The Elgin's reside in Kent WA, and have two sons and six grandchildren.

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Contents

INTRODUCTION

PROLEGOMENON

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

POSTLEGOMENON

APPENDIX

Publishers

Acknowledgments and Permissions

Hymn Quotes Permissions

Endnotes

Recognitions and Tributes

INTRODUCTION

Theological books traditionally include numerous references to the will of God. Denominational worship service books rank high in the number of inclusions on the subject. Authors pull material out of Scripture and religious experience for use in liturgical rites and rituals. THE WILL OF GOD: Re. The Presbyterian Church (USA) Book of Common Worship examines several of the resources.

The denominational concentration on the subject should need little apology. Most church worship service books employ, copy, or build upon familiar historical, resources, the Episcopal BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER being prominent among them. The material is historically catholic, in the more common sense of that word. Churches that have had a long tradition of liturgy in their worship, sometimes referred to as High Churches, offer the richest treasure of material, but with many churches now experiencing liturgical renewal, new breadth and depth on the topic have enriched the field. Traditional Scriptural and ecclesiastical vocabulary dominate the usage and newer phraseologies and gender updates have enriched it. Contemporary worship is beginning to make its contribution.

The Presbyterian Church (USA) BOOK OF COMMON WORSHIP published in 1993 is the basic resource text for this book, references from which will be abbreviated and inserted under the simple (italicized) word WILL. WILL material from the Book of Common Worship will henceforth go by the abbreviated letters BCW. Extensive quotes will be extracted from the BCW and the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible. Material is also quoted from the Christian Century, October 5, 2010 issue, and Professor Ben Campbell Johnson’s, DISCERNING GOD’S WILL, published by the Westminster John Knox Press, 1990.

As the author of WILL I am a graduate of the Pittsburgh (Xenia until 1958) Presbyterian Theological Seminary. I obtained both the Master of Divinity and Master of Sacred Theology degrees from the institution. Further, I have earned a Ph. D. Degree from the New College of the University of Edinburgh, Scotland (1959).

Most of my ministry has been spent as a Presbyterian Pastor, and a sometime Professor. I served a Pastorate in a New Zealand Presbyterian Church from 1993-5; volunteered in Mission ministry with a Congregation in Bali, Indonesia (1999); taught at the Colegio Americano Presbiteriano in Bogotá, Colombia (2,000); was Pastor with the Second Union Church, San Juan, Puerto Rico (2002-04); and in 2005, I spent a semester teaching at the University of Livingstonia, Livingstonia, Malawi, Africa. The University was chartered and remains under the aegis of the Church Central Africa Presbyterian, Synod of Livingstonia.

My wife Marjorie and I are residents of Kent, WA. She graduated (1953) with a Masters Degree in Christian Education from the Pittsburgh (Xenia) Theological Seminary. She has helped with proofreading the manuscript and offering other critical suggestions. My principal proofreader and style and syntax advisor has been Carol Starr of Lakewood, WA.

The Elgin’s elder son Mark owns a Construction Company in Birmingham, Alabama, where his family also has residence. A younger son Paul is Director of Music at Providence Presbyterian Church in Hilton Head, SC. He lives there with his wife and two children.

Physically writing WILL began with highlighting the approximately one hundred ninety references on the subject in the 1030 pages of text in the BCW. Closely related synonyms also received marks. The selections were then collated into hardcopy pages, and they constitute the Appendix of the book. Six thematic chapters were settled on: I. Defined; II. Discerned; III. Jesus Christ; IV. The Holy Spirit; V. Done; and, VI. Disturbed. A prologue, Prolegomenon, and an epilogue, Postlegomenon, also attach to the text. Appropriate and required publishing information, acknowledgments, footnotes references, permissions data and recognition-tributes are included.

During and consequent upon completing the writing of WILL, permissions were being obtained from the copyright information supplied by Michele Blum, an Associate Editor of the Presbyterian Publishing Corporation in Louisville, Kentucky. Ms. Blum also provided the publishing data for the Appendix.

WILL should prove useful to pastors, clergy administrators and executives, congregation worship leaders and persons who have a general interest in liturgical history and formation and who are asked to select appropriate pieces for services of public worship.

PROLEGOMENON

God our helper,

by your Holy Spirit, open our minds,

that as the Scriptures are read

and your word is proclaimed,

we may be led into your truth

and taught your will,

for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord. (BCW, 90.3.)

Will serves in WILL as both noun and verb. Mortals exercise their personal will for good or for bad. The exertion for good offers one testimony that human beings are created in the image of God. God flexed the divine will in the whole panorama of creation. The opening verse of Scripture records the activity: In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. At the end of creating the world and everything in it, God was pleased with the result: God saw everything that he had made, and indeed it was very good. (Gen. 1:1-2; 31.) The divine will had done well.

God’s euphoria over willing a good and perfect creation was short-lived. As distressful to God as any imaginable situation surely must have been the sudden and imminent rebellious exercise of will by the ones in whom God had placed great confidence: Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion… . So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God also created a serpent and the serpent flexed its primitive will, or instinct, on the male and female. The animal persuaded the couple to disobey God’s restrictions on their fruit eating in the Garden. God had instructed the couple: Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.

God gave painful and, at first, passive attention to the two human beings as they playfully and disobediently used their wills to satisfy their pleasure. They soon discovered that their disobedience portended serious consequences. The serpent’s testing them and their capitulation disposed the couple to live, and their posterity had to learn to survive, with a fractured will. Eve and Adam with God’s permission had allowed a serpent to lead them into sin. They lost their residence and existence in the Garden of Eden, although they retained access to some of God’s most privileged graces: mercy, steadfast love, providence, redemption, forgiveness, and many more. They also became subject to God’s displeasure and wrath.

God’s self-disclosure as a God of free will with potential for both salvation and condemnation had allowed the first mortals and their posterity the opportunity to choose how to handle their own will, for good or for evil. The first woman and man soon learned the peril of their freedom. Although neither God nor Eve and Adam would have wanted it otherwise, the newly created human beings were suddenly faced with unfavorable results that arise when the freedom to choose is not correctly exercised. Bad choices adversely influence the quality of human interactions with God, with each other and with the world. A warning about the extent of damage that disobedience can create did not rule human reasoning at the moment of temptation. Guilt would have to prick the conscience, and eventually penitence may emerge.

God’s image in the human makeup includes the ability to discern and exercise will and, sometimes, to weigh the consequences seriously enough to forestall an abusive and damaging exercise of it. One consequence that may result from that exercise of a healthy conscience and a rational assessment of disobedience may be the discovery of God’s will and a disposition to imitate the character of God. The will may prove powerful enough to give an individual sufficient wisdom and sound thinking to wrest hegemony over evil, and do the good. The psyche makes connection with goodness and righteousness, and the desire to do good morally and socially proves stronger than the desire to do evil. Mind and heart, knowledge and will, have linked. The union feels good, and the spirit wants to maintain it. A connection with good has been made that may result in good habits of the heart.

The thesis written about in WILL holds that the influencing of the human will that results in good and moral achievement occurs more assuredly and more permanently from the experience of divine worship. The liturgically exercised worship of the God of Jesus Christ introduced one means of establishing the standard the Apostle Paul wanted the Corinthian Church to follow in all their behaviors, a mode he termed a still more excellent way, in other words, the way of love (1 Corinthians 12:31b.). The alliance between will and worship, control and conviction, emotion and action and love and devotion could create peace more quickly, agreeably and permanently between friend and foe, or even friend and friend if the still more excellent way were sought and welcomed. That way centers significantly and productively in the liturgical exercises examined in THE WILL OF GOD: Re. The Presbyterian Church (USA) Book of Common Worship. The congregation that adopts and loves the exercises or similar ones finds itself on the way that leads to the peace that passes all understanding because the hearts and minds of the worshipers focus on the knowledge and love of God.

WILL explores reflections on both the divine and human will. Restricting the exploration to a particular denominational worship resource does not suffer from hubris for a particular dogmatic affiliation. The author just happens by divine pre-election, he believes, to have had a lifelong Presbyterian background and affiliation. The approach of WILL—the book—has more universal goals. One settles on the affirmation that worship from beings capable of knowing and responding to God fulfills the highest priority in human obedience and the fullest response to divine disclosure. In worship, God and human beings come into the deepest and holiest consciousness of each other’s presence and, particularly in God’s case, introduces a commitment and resolve to do the utmost to love and serve each other. The mortal resolution is to imitate, imagine and chart a more certain path toward the end that the fallen human nature will be transformed more closely to resemble God’s, in both content and intent. God’s redeeming and converting sinful creatures into a higher righteousness and a more determined resolve to be obedient may then change society and preserve creation. Hubris is checked when the mortal sins by not worshiping God in spirit and in truth, and asks for forgiveness.

Although not of the same level of inspiration as Scripture or the Bible, but still requiring a high output of benevolent will and emotion, denominational worship resources that are of the quality and rationality prescribed in the Prelegomenon lean heavily on Scripture. The prayers, the service orders, the responses, the implications, and the assurances that form the center of worship as cited in WILL employ, because they need, holy language. Direct references to the will of God, intercessions for discerning it, rules for doing and warnings about disturbing it feature prominently in the orders of services in most denominational worship books and guides. They serve to lead the devout to adopt the credo based on the words of the Apostle Paul, It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20.)

As a lifetime Presbyterian Church member, baptized as an infant in the United Presbyterian Church of North America, and living my ecclesiastical life and my religious profession in it until it merged with the larger Presbyterian Church in 1958, I have been dogmatically molded and spiritually shaped by the ecclesiastical persuasion known as Reformed. I justifiably describe my total spiritual situation religiously, historically and comprehensively, as Evangelical Apostolic Catholic Reformed Presbyterian. Confessional and connectional are also fitting words to describe my religious birth, baptism, education, confirmation, ordination, profession and marriage. (And ultimately my death, I trust.)

I thus grew up and entered ministry in a milieu that shares a reputation for doing things decently and in order and under a sovereign God. The decency and order stem in part because the church of my background had a Book of Common Worship, or its equivalent. Worship was free, but it also conformed—depending in large part on the pastor and church eldership—to certain liturgical and organizational standards. I could attend a (United or USA) Presbyterian Church in different American locations, and frequently a British one, with the expectation of singing familiar hymns, following similar worship rubrics, and hearing a sermon with roots in scripture and reformed doctrine—often with three points and frequently delivered without notes. A Book of Common Worship could be counted on as having been consulted by the pastor or studied in seminary for the order that was followed. A Directory for Worship might also have shaped the style.

The book which currently in the Presbyterian Church (USA) bears the title Book of Common Worship, which as noted earlier will hereafter to be referred to as BCW, has a cousin, or perhaps better stated, a friendly childhood connection, with the PCUSA Constitutional Document, the Directory for Worship. An explanatory statement about the purpose of a Directory appears in the BCW, Preface, p. 2:

(Having the authority of Church Law) the Directory provides the theology that informs and directs worship, and includes appropriate rubrics for it. It sets forth the standards and the norms for the ordering it. It does not have fixed orders of worship or liturgical texts… . The church’s Service Book (or the BCW), on the other hand, provides orders and texts for worship. It is in harmony with the Directory and is approved for voluntary use… . The Service Book sets forth, in orders of services and in liturgical texts, the theology and norms described in the Directory. Service books have a longer history in the Reformed tradition than directories, and most churches in the Reformed community do not have directories but do have service books.

The Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. had published its Book of Common Worship in 1906, and had significantly revised it in 1932 and 1946. My United Presbyterian denomination of birth, infancy, youth, young adulthood and early professional service, followed a manual called The Manual for Worship. After the UPNA and the PC (USA) merged in 1958 to become the UPCUSA, the latter cooperated with the mostly southern PC (US) in a 1972 publication, The Worshipbook—Services. Following the reunion of The Presbyterian Church in the U.S. and the UPCUSA the book was subsequently revised into The Worshipbook Services and Hymns. The Cumberland Presbyterian Church had also joined in the publications. The Book of Common Worship was published in 1993.

My United Presbyterian Church spiritual and liturgical formation since infancy has thus not been without the benefit of worship service books. My musical and church order pieties developed and were exercised primarily and musically around the 1927 United Presbyterian (North America) songbook, the Psalter Hymnal. The UPNA Church then broadened in our musical adaptations and mutations when the Songs for Christian Worship and later The Hymnbook dictated our singing and in the hearts of some made us singers truer to Scripture: With gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God. (Galatians 3:16.) Liturgical vocal musical and verbal exercise in worship consisted primarily of singing Psalms and hymns and responsively reading Scripture; no corporate calls to worship or prayers of confession with assurances of pardon. Church Year observance did not catch my attention or receive my appreciation or invoke my inclusion of appropriate seasonal resources in worship until the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. Even then worship innovation was minimal. Thus, neither the Church Calendar nor liturgical renewal received serious attention in my early-church experience, including my early pastoral and professional life. The Pittsburgh Xenia United Presbyterian Theological Seminary had minimal emphasis on corporate worship participation aside from those mentioned above.

I graduated from Pitt-Xenia in 1952. I had been called in the middle of my 1951 senior seminary year to be the weekend Minister with the UP Church in Cadiz, Ohio. I was ordained into that congregation shortly after graduation in May 1952. By then I was expanding corporate worship experience with slightly innovative introductions. My innovations were interrupted after being awarded a senior seminary year scholarship for theological study abroad. I obtained a leave of absence from the Ohio congregation and I traveled to study in Scotland during the academic year, 1952-3. Partly as a result of my Scottish studies and subsequent travels across Europe and Egypt and the Middle East before returning to Ohio, my worship sensitivities and interests began to expand. Liturgical curiosity urged me on.

I made a significant worship leap in my early days in the United Kingdom. On my first day in London in September 1952, before heading for Scotland, I worshiped at Westminster Abbey. At the appropriate time in the service, I joined other communicants and went to the altar and knelt. I accepted a wafer at the hand of the priest and then gulped real wine from a common cup. The order felt fine for Westminster Abbey but, having been raised in a more abstemious alcohol deprivation, I decided that I would never be able to serve the real drink in a United Presbyterian Communion Service.

My subsequent travels throughout the United Kingdom and Europe, and from there through Egypt to Israel, continued to introduce me to communion wine stronger than the unfermented grape juice I had become accustomed to ever since my First Communion at age eleven with the trays of cut bread and small cups of grape juice passed in the pews in my Pennsylvania hometown United Presbyterian Church. One restriction associated with the eucharistic rule of the UPNA Church was: No communion without church membership. I did not foresee a change of bread-and-cup style happening very soon in my United Presbyterian ministry. At that time I did not see a need for change; at this point with my cup participation primarily by intinction of the bread in grape juice I am liturgically satisfied and I would be of the same emotion whether the drink were juice or wine.

After forty years of parish-pastoral